Filmtip for a Filmtrip - Film Reviews

Asphalt is about the young traffic officer Albert Holk, who falls in love with a sly thief. An inner struggle between duty and love follows. This simple story would have become a sweet melodrama, where it not that Joe May would have been the director. May was in 1929, when this film came out, already an experienced director who made 64 movies. Although this Austrian film-maker, who made his first film in 1911, had his own production company, he made this film for UFA, Germany's largest production company at that time. Under the name of Fred Majo, May wrote with Hans Székely and Rolf E. Vanloo, who wrote the original story, the script. May thought that a film had to appeal to everybody in the world and he did not differ from that philosophy when he made this film. Although Asphalt is set in Berlin's busy city center, it could also been set in New York. I would even say more strongly; Due to the underexposure and rapid editing, which boosts the hectic in the big city, i